Free alternatives to classic games

[Dread Knight 0]

Feel free to add my project, Ancient Beast, to this list as well. It's a Heroes of Might and Magic clone, I see you made 2 categories for that

The source is available here https://github.com/FreezingMoon/AncientBeast (project is free open source).

[MrFlibble 31]

In a super belated post, I think this is a quite funny April Fools joke.

[Guest Stevie_K]

Haha. Yeah that was pretty good

[Nyerguds 100]

They could've used zombie models rather than skeletons, though

[PurpleGaga27 37]

Other than Renegade-X, Blacklight: Retribution is another one of those free-to-play MP games with skirmish modes powered by the Unreal Engine 3.

 

Mr. Flibble, I like you to add Blacklight: Retribution as a free Battlefield/Call of Duty alternative. To get the game, it's in Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/209870

Edited May 12, 2014 by zocom7

[MrFlibble 31]

Mr. Flibble, I like you to add Blacklight: Retribution as a free Battlefield/Call of Duty alternative. To get the game, it's in Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/209870

Thanks for the info! (Sorry for a belated reply, I didn't check the forums for a while.)

[PurpleGaga27 37]

Here's another alternative to all YugiOh PC and Nintendo games, YGOPRO (known as Yu-Gi-Oh Pro), the free open-source game supported by most types of OSs, even Android and iOS. It is codenamed the Percy version and is the most stable among all other alternatives: http://ygopro.co

 

The alternatives to the original YGOPRO:

YGOPRO TDOANE: http://ygopro.org

DevPro: http://ygopro.de/en (created by the German players)

Salvation: http://ygopro.us (created by the female players)

MyCard: http://my-card.in (Chinese version)

[HOPE1134 28]

Battlefield 2: Project Reality mod is now standalone

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/project-reality/downloads/project-reality-bf2-standalone

[PurpleGaga27 37]

Except for the fact that it's 6.9 GB to download as an ISO file. That's huge for an indie game.

[MrFlibble 31]

Wyrmsun is a free, open source real-time strategy game that runs on the Stratagus engine (an engine recreation of Warcraft II). Its art style is remarkable close to that of Blizzard's famous game, however Wyrmsun is an original title with its own unique features like individual unit names, traits and experience points, a turn-based grand strategy mode, and a setting that blends fantasy and mythology with real historical background.

 

Wyrmsun is free and open source, but those who would like to support its development can buy copies from Steam and Desura.

 

Annex: Conquer the World is a free, open source real-time strategy game based on the MegaGlest engine, which is apparently inspired by the Command & Conquer series of games, as well as Earth 2140 and sequels, Warzone 2100 and StarCraft. There are four playable factions, several terrain tilesets, customizable tech trees, campaign scenarios, skirmish and mutliplayer modes.

 

The same developer is working on another RTS with a space sci-fi setting, called Terra Centauri: Last Stand. A beta is available here.

 

openKB is an engine recreation project for New World Computing's King's Bounty, with planned support for the original game's files as well as a free open source data set. The development is in its early stages, so no downloads yet.

 

Free Mars is a free, open source turn-based strategy game inspired by Sid Meier's Civilization, Colonization and Alpha Centauri.

 

Rescue! Max is a remake of Rescue!, a Mac shareware game.

 

CATharsis is a project to create an open source clone of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project in Blender. It's not an engine recreation, but rather a stand-alone game similar to DNMP but with its own protagonist, art, levels etc. Rather early stages of development.

 

OpenGGS is an open source remake of The Great Giana Sisters (a Super Mario Bros. clone). The author has permission to use original graphics from the Commodore 64 version, but there's also a free tile set as well.

 

In other news, recently a Windows binary executable was made available for LordsAWar!, a free open source clone of SSG's Warlords II. The version is 0.3.0, which features a two single-player scenarios, random map mode, and network multiplayer.

Edited July 29, 2015 by MrFlibble

[MrFlibble 31]

Added the free/prototype version of Sublevel Zero as a game inspired by Descent. Essentially, it's a 6DoF corridor flyer/shooter with randomly generated levels:

 

This free prototype version was made in 72 hours and submitted to Ludum Dare. The game was then further developed into a commercial version which is very different from the initial free release.

[MrFlibble 31]

Feudal Wars is a project of a free browser-based medieval RTS inspired by Age of Empires II. The list of features can be found here, and the project messageboard showcases the graphics and other stuff already done.

 

According to the FAQ, there will be a kickstarter for the game at some point. There seem to be no plans for a non-browser versions for now, but perhaps the authors will agree to release their assets into public domain and those could be combined with the OpenAge engine recreation of AoE2.

[Inferno 22]

Very cool!

[MrFlibble 31]

Freedoom v0.10 is out, with lots of improvements. More monsters and almost all weapons have been replaced with higher quality art. Maps have been updated as well.

 

Wyrmsun v1.8.0 adds the custom hero option and inventories for heroes and high-level units.

[TaxOwlbear 20]

Does someone have a download link for Dark Conflict? The website is down. I found via the Internet Archive:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150304080203/http://www.teamxtcgames.com/dark_konflict.htm

 

... but the download links don't work.

[Plok 316]

To add something to the list...

 

OpenRCT2 is an early-in-development open-source recreation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 with a similar goal to OpenTTD. It's being done in C, and requires RCT2 to be installed at the moment, but you can bypass that by installing the special Triple Thrill Pack demo (info here).

[TaxOwlbear 20]

Nevermind, found a working download here: http://www.gametion.com/download-games/multiplayer-games/dark-konflict-games-free-download.htm

[MrFlibble 31]

Dark Konflict seemed like a very promising game, it's a pity the development was abandoned.

[MrFlibble 31]

A user in another forum notified me that some links were down/hacked so I replaced them with Wayback Machine links. Some more games were added to the list too.

[InfernoDisco 0]

Wow, this thread is awesome! Bookmarked it! The last time I was reading about free alternatives was an article in some computer magazine in 2006. By the way does anybody knows is there an alternative to this game? Thanks.

[MrFlibble 31]

Here's a nice game: Robot Redemption. It's based on the source code of Hovertank 3D and plays rather similarly.

And The Vigilance of Nephthys is fairly similar to / inspired by Catacomb 3D games.

[MrFlibble 31]

Did a major update/overhaul of the first post. I decided to focus on accurate recreations of non-free games, and ditched those free projects that can be thought of as an Ersatz of several games in a certain genre, but aren't specifically emulating any particular title (like Cube, MegaGlest or Annex: Conquer the World). Note that direct unauthorised/unofficial remakes which use proprietary data or other content are not included in the lists.

The games are now grouped based on completely different principles that hopefully reflect the field in a more meaningful way than before. I corrected some classification errors too -- previously some games that were not engine recreations with free data were labelled as such (e.g. Dave Gnukem -- it does not use original Duke Nukem 1 data).

I updated links where necessary, and added Wayback Machine links if project pages are no longer available. Abandoned projects that have not reached any meaningful stage of development are no longer features in the lists.

[MrFlibble 31]

On 9/10/2012 at 5:49 PM, MrFlibble said:

Warcraft II
o Aleona's Tales

Recently I discovered that the latest version of Aleona's Tales (bundled with Wargus 2.4.3) does no work out of the box - in fact, no 2.4.x release does.

I figured out that this is caused by errors with PNG files, which I was able to correct and threw together a fix for the latest version: tales-2.4.3-fix.zip

To use, first install the 2.4.3 release from GitHub, then unzip the contents of the fix archive, overwriting the files.

Edited December 9, 2021 by MrFlibble

[MrFlibble 31]

Updated the Aleona's Tales fix: aleonas-tales-2.4.3-fix-r2.zip

[MrFlibble 31]

Here's a little hotfix for Aleona's Tales sprites: tales-quick-fix.zip

It repairs some extra transparency in Peasant, Fawn, Knight and Gryphon sprites, and adds shadows to Footman and Archer sprites. Additionally, I replaced Footman and under attack voice with higher quality alternatives by David Slimp which I found in the old CVS repo, plus I attempted to repair some other speech and sounds with clicks and noise using Audacity.